Archive for the ‘Hate Crimes’ Category

Thats the bottom line. And it is rotting our country, no matter what flavor or shape it comes in.

The killing of 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen, whose body was found in a pond near her mosque in Northern Virginia after some sort of encounter with a motorist, is not being investigated as a hate crime, officials said Monday.

Officials are saying its being investigated as a road rage incident.

A hate crime, as we understand it, fits into a tight, legal narrative. Its a crime motivated by prejudice whether its based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

And so far, investigators do not believe Nabra was picked out, targeted and killed specifically because she was a Muslim wearing an abaya, walking to her mosque. And it seems that she was not killed simply because she was a young woman walking outside in the darkness.

[Killing of Muslim teenager is being investigated as road-rage incident]

Officials say the suspect in her killing, Darwin Martinez Torres, was driving as a group that included Nabra was walking and riding bikes in and along the road. And then something, like road rage, happened.

But her mother said detectives have told her that Nabra was struck with a metal bat.

There is no doubt that hitting a 17-year-old girl with a bat and dumping her body in a pond would be an act born of hate, which is rages twin brother.

An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, has never been more true. This is what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R) said after a gunman opened fire on a GOP baseball practice last week in Alexandria.

Tragedy after tragedy, we puzzle through the labels and follow the common narratives to try to find the logic: Liberals hating Republicans? Muslims hating Christians? White hating black? Cats hating dogs?

But that doesnt seem to always work. The nation is more than the Hatfields and McCoys.

Even if this was not a hate crime targeting Muslims, it has the effect of one.

The Muslim community in Virginia is nervous. This happened on the same weekend that an attacker crashed a car into a crowd outside a mosque in London. That appeared to be a very deliberate attack on Muslims.

Folks at the Virginia mosque, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling, are left to wonder whether they should provide deeper security and patrols during these last 10 days of Ramadan, because they may be targets of hate.

And all women wondered whether this means that this bedroom community is now a place that isnt safe for them to walk around in.

And all parents of teens wondered if this is about teens no longer being safe in the suburban haven they moved their kids to.

And because Nabra is also African American, born in America to Egyptian immigrants, African Americans wondered whether this is another instance of them being targeted because of their race.

It really is an attack on all of us.

Loudoun County, in all its diversity, is seeing that.

Torres, the 22-year-old charged with Nabras killing, is Latino and doesnt appear to have connected with any hate groups on his Facebook page. He doesnt fit into the narrative we come to expect when faced with alleged hate crimes.

That may be why so many in Loudoun seem to have a heighten sense of fear.

No one is looking at this as only a Muslim thing, said Abdul Rashid Abdullah, a member of ADAMS whose son was at the mosque the night of the incident. This is not just an attack on Muslims, its an attack on the entire community.

In Britain, the van driver who plowed into a crowd was heard yelling that he wanted to kill Muslims.

[Van strikes crowd near London mosques in terrorist attack]

In Loudoun County, the man accused of killing Nabra was not reported to have said anything about her religion. But a Muslim teenage girl is dead. And were being told that some sort of road rage led to her death.

And what about the death of a patriotic and accomplished young man named Richard Collins III, who was standing on a curb at a Maryland college campus when he was fatally stabbed in May? Was that hate?

Or the deaths of two men who were fatally stabbed on a train in Portland, Ore., after trying to defend two women from a man making anti-Muslim statements? Was that hate?

Or what about the shootings on a baseball field in Alexandria, where a gunman asked whether the politicians practicing were Republicans or Democrats before he opened fire? Was that hate?

Hatred of all stripes is growing.

We watched it, stoked it with every debate that turned into an argument, fanned it with every Facebook meme that went just a bit too far, fueled it with every zero-sum approach to discourse and action. Courtesy is no longer the norm.

Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is trying again on a bill to keep anyone who has committed a hate crime from buying guns.

Casey, a Democrat, first introduced the legislation one year ago, just days after the shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The measure would expand the categories of those banned from purchasing firearms to include anyone convicted of misdemeanor-level hate crimes such asusing a gun to threaten others based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability. Federal law currently bans those convicted of felonies and domestic violence misdemeanors from buying guns.

Casey reintroduced the bill, known as the Disarm Hate Act, earlier this month as the country remembers the 49 victims of last year’s Orlando shooting, as well as the nine people fatally shot during a prayer meeting at Mother Bethel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.

“Hate unchecked usually grows in almost every instance,” Casey said at a press conference Monday at Mother Bethel AME Church in Ardmore, Montgomery County.”And hate unchecked with the use of a firearm can have a destructive impact.”

However, it is unclear how the legislation might have prevented the Orlando or Charleston shootings; neither of perpetrator had been convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes before, according to news reports. And, with a Republican-dominated Congress averse to tightening gun laws, this bill is unlikely to go further than its predecessor, which never left the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But anti-gun violence advocates say it’s part of a common-sense approach to limit sales of firearms only to law-abiding citizens and to keep them out of the hands of those with a record of harming others.

“We know people intent on harm will find ways to do harm. We make it too easy, though,” said Shira Goodman, executive director of Ceasefire PA. “We don’t have enough prohibited categories and, in some places, you can buy guns in private sales without any background check, regardless of whether you have a felony conviction.”

While the future of this bill is uncertain, Tiara Parker wants lawmakers to go further in their attempts to curb gun violence.The 21-year-old Philadelphia resident survived the Pulse shooting with a gunshot wound to her left side. Her cousin Akyra Murray did not.

Speaking from the pulpit of the church, Parker urged Casey “to dig a little deeper… to stop guns from being purchased so easily, starting from the sources, from where they come from.

“I will do what it takes to make sure that we start getting rid of them because I lost way too many people that are way too close to me because of a gun.”

An Illinois bill that awaits Republican Gov. Bruce Rauners signaturewould require convicted hate crime offenders to take diversity training courses pertaining to the specific group that they victimized.

The bills main author, Sadia Covert, is a member of the Islamic Center of Naperville and began her crusade for hate crime reform in 2014, the Illinois Daily Herald reported Monday. In addition to diversity courses, the law would remove the states $1,000 cap on restitution payments and allow victims to pursue other monetary damages in civil court. Rauner is expected to approve the bill this week.

We cannot stay silent on hate, Rauner said in a March statement. We cannot stay silent when families in our community are in danger.

The bill is the first in a three-step plan that Covert hopes, if implemented fully, will curb hate crime in Illinois, the Herald reported. Covert decried the absence of diversity training and education in Illinois current hate crime penalties, arguing that prison time alone is unhelpful.

When people have more understanding, theyre less likely to hate or commit a crime, Covert said.

Democratic State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, who sponsored the bill, told reporters that the educational component is very needed.

Sometimes people engage in hateful outbreaks against other minorities just because they might not understand or have a working knowledge of individuals different genders, different religions, different mannerisms just the differences between us, Kifowit said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called a summit in February to address the states apparent spike in hate crimes, citing the numerous bomb threats against Jewish centers across the country. Many of these threats were later debunked, however, as one former leftist reporter for The Intercept pled guilty to making eight such bomb threats in an attempt to get back at his Jewish ex-girlfriend.

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Islamophobia, or hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims, is still not taken seriously enough in Britain, according to campaigners and academics.

Following the terrorist attack in north Londons Seven Sisters, which left one dead and 10 in hospital, celebrities and the public alike have criticized outlets of Islamophobic rhetoric.

Among the culprits are tabloid newspapers like the Sun, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum, and the leader of far-right group Britain First, Paul Golding.

Islamophobia is not taken seriously enough in this country, Tom Mills, co-editor of the book What is Islamophobia, told RT.

You can say things about Muslims and Islam in British public life that you would never get away with saying about other minority groups.

I dont think theres any doubt about that. But theres also the fact that if you look at the data, Islamophobic terrorist attacks in the UK are roughly as prevalent as attacks by those identifying with Islam, yet they are not treated as such by the media or the authorities.

When the story was originally reported by the Daily Mail as white van driver injures at least 10 people, Harry Potter author JK Rowling launched a series of tweets asking how the perpetrator had been radicalized the sort of questions asked following attacks by Islamist extremists.

The Mail has misspelled terrorist as white van driver. Now lets discuss how he was radicalized, she tweeted.

She followed it up with the caption of a tweet by UKIPs former leader Nigel Farage and his unveiling of a Leave campaign poster showing a long line of presumed migrants with the words Breaking Point superimposed.

Lets talk about how the #FinsburyPark terrorist was radicalized, she added.

Her messages triggered a series of angry replies from Farage and rightwing pundit Katie Hopkins, who Rowling also accused of provoking Islamophobia.

Academics like Mills believe the problem lies within British society and its failure to understand how the vilification of Muslims works.

Its not just that Islamophobia isnt taken seriously enough, though. Its also that it is not properly understood,”Mills said.

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Hate crimes against Muslims are recorded by the police, which is a good thing, and there are a number of initiatives seeking to combat bigoted views about against Muslims, as well as the far right groups and movements associated with them.

But what tends to always get overlooked is that the far right are just part of a broader continuum of actors that produce Islamophobia.

At the heart of Islamophobia in this country is the state, and in particular the state counter-terrorism apparatus, and then there are much more mainstream conservative, as well as liberal, groupings, that have actively contributed towards an Islamophobic culture and policy agenda.

A report by anti-Islamophobia group Tell MAMA reported at the end of last year that British mosques had been attacked no less than 100 times since 2013.

Local jail and state prison union officials hope that a proposed bill that seeks to punish attacks on law enforcement as hate crimes will reduce the number of inmate-on-staff assaults at correctional facilities.

On June 1, an Oneida County Correctional Facility inmate reportedly stabbed a correction officer in the shoulder and chest with an unknown weapon, said Luis Roman, president of the Oneida County Deputy Sheriffs Benevolent Association. He believes the proposed bill could go a long way toward preventing assaults on correction officers.

I think that if the inmates understood that they could be charged with a hate crime, it would dissuade them from those activities that go on at the jail almost every night, Roman said.

The Community Heroes Protection Act classifies certain crimes against first responders such as law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency personnel, including correction officers as hate crimes only if they are intentionally aimed at first responders based on actual or perceived employment in that field.

Police officers and first responders are not currently included as victims in the current definition of a hate crime.

The Community Heroes Protection Act passed the state Senate in May and was delivered to the Assembly. It currently is in committee. Local supporters of the proposed bill include Sen. Joseph Griffo, R-Rome, and Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, D-Utica.

I do think that if this was to go into effect and we got the support from the Assembly that we did from the Senate that it would almost force justice to be served, Roman said. Because it doesnt seem like anything goes anywhere. I know (getting assaulted) is part of my day. If that should happen to me there should be consequences.

Assault incidents reported to Roman at the Oneida County jail in 2017 to date were not immediately available. In 2016, Roman recorded more than 16 incidents detailing conduct ranging from menacing to harassment to assault.

In a fact sheet dated June 1, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision reported 318 assaults on staff by prison inmates statewide. There were 760 reported assaults last year and 895 in 2015. The data does not break down the assaults in individual facilities, such as Mohawk, Marcy or Mid-State correctional facilities.

In a statement, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association said the proposed bill if passed would hopefully serve as a deterrent for those who would specifically target anyone in law enforcement because of their profession.

Correction officers have one of the most difficult jobs in the country and face constant dangers and attacks at the hands of some of the most violent criminals in the state, the statement read. Certainly, we fully support this legislation and commend the legislators who introduced this bill and support it and our members.

When the bag of feces arrived at the LGBT Center Orange County, Laura Kanter knew immediately what to do.

She picked up the phone and called the Orange County Human Relations Council to talk with Don Han, who deals with hate crimes.

Kanter, as director of policy advocacy and youth services for the LGBT Center in Santa Ana, recently recalled the disturbing incident that occurred in May. She said that the council provides an important service in the community.

We can call the police and I did, and they’ll just take a report, she said. But I knew we had someone to turn to and that’s what these folks do best. They look at the bigger picture to create understanding between communities.”

Hans non-profit organization was founded in 1991 in part to raise money and develop programs overseen by the Orange County Human Relations Commission. The council works with law enforcement agencies, compiles an annual hate crime report and provides mediation and violence prevention programs in partnerships with schools, corporations, cities, foundations and individuals.

We try to be a voice of reason and listen, Han said, and were committed to getting people from all sides to come together.

The council has raised about $30 million in the last 25 years to support the county commissions work, according to its website. But until recently the council was in danger of losing the funding that pays for its three-member staff, including Han.

For months, county supervisors debated back and forth, threatening to cut the $252,000 needed to pay for the councils personnel, while the group received an eviction notice to vacate the county building where it has operated, rent-free, by July 1.

Meanwhile, the number of reported hate crimes increased 50 in 2016, compared with 44 the year before with African Americans and the LGBT population as the two most frequently targeted communities across the county, according to the councils newest report. This trend, coupled with the fear that Orange County could lose its human relations advocates, prompted more than 300 supporters to swarm supervisors meetings this month, pushing to allow the two groups to continue their partnership.

Among the proponents praising the groups anti-bullying, interfaith and mediation campaigns was Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, who said there is a lot of fear in our immigrant and LGBTQ communities. This is an important public safety and quality of life issue for us.

The board voted 4 to 1 this week, with Supervisor Michelle Steel as the lone dissenter, to continue funding the council for at least another year. But the panel also urged the council and commission to stop co-mingling, with one supervisor noting that some commission staff members report to the councils director.

Supervisor Andrew Do, the most vocal opponent before the vote, criticized the confusion between the operations of the council and commission, saying it raises questions about accountability and leaves the board vulnerable to violations of state public meeting laws.

The public has to be clear on the two entities, he said. Right now, theyre so intertwined, people dont know whos responsible for what and as supervisors, we dont know whats going on at the council while were the ones overseeing the commission that works with them.

On June 6, supervisors deadlocked 2 to 2, with one member absent, on the personnel funding for the council. Supervisor Todd Spitzer proposed another vote a week later with the full board present. Do ended up voting to allocate the money because the work is still viable, he said. People around the county still need a voice.

Spitzer blamed the county for initially pressuring the non-profit to raise funds for commission programs during a time when Orange County faced a bankruptcy scandal. He said the board must choose if it wants to give money to programs and control its delivery or allow the non-profit to continue finding revenue.

Commission and council members promised to meet with county officials to find a way to separate our administration and still be effective, said Rusty Kennedy, the councils chief executive. Were ecstatic to be able to continue.

President Donald Trump announced he was running for office on June 16, 2015. The following day, white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire in a historically black church located in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people in the hopes of launching an all-out race war.

“There doesnt seem to be a single marginalized population that was left out of the emboldened reaction to this election,”she said. “There has been a massive explosion of violence across the country, and an increase in the number of hate crimes against virtually all minority groups. The numbers are definitely going up in 2017.”

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Two years after Roof sat in on a bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, before taking out his gun and shooting the local parishioners, reports of hate crimes against black, Muslim, LGBTI, Sikh, Jewish and Hispanic communities have only continued to surge. Meanwhile, groups like SPLC and the Human Rights Campaign say battling the rise in hate-based violence will largely take place online in the coming years, where racists and those prone to committing attacks against minorities feed off of radicalized content and fake news.

A church youth group from Dothan, Alabama praying in front of the Emanuel AME Church on the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting on July 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. John Moore, Getty

When looking at the data, it becomes immediately clear that spikes in hate crimes and racial tension havent only impacted black communities, like the Episcopal Church. There were at least 1,314 reported cases of anti-Muslim bias in 2014, according to the FBIs annual Uniform Crime Report. By 2016, that annual figure soared to 2,213.

Anti-Semitic incidents also rose in 2015, the latest year the Anti-Defamation League has data on, rising three percent to 941 total incidents nationwide.

Of all the hate crimes carried out that year, over 48 percent were committed by whites.

“We know that the normalization of violence, particularly against marginalized people, creates a culture of complicity and acceptance of hate based violence,”Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, tells Newsweek. “We also see that the political climate fosters violence. As anti-transgender measures are introduced across the country and the rhetoric is turned up, we are hearing from the community an increased vulnerability of harassment in their daily lives.”

In total, hate crimes rose from 5,479 reported incidents in 2014 to 5,800 the next year, when Roof made his decision to act on a months-long quest he had documented at length across the web and on his racist website, TheLastRhodesian.com.

Roof, who wassentencedto death on Jan. 10, 2017,was reportedly an avid reader of Daily Stormer, a hate-mongering website loaded with racial conspiracy theories, fake news and anti-Semitism. The sites readership also included James Jackson, who penned a suicide manifesto before driving from Baltimore to New York to kill a random black man with a sword, as well as Thomas Mair, an extremist loner who murdered BritishParliament member Jo Cox.

The 23-year-old also searched on Google for information about the case of Trayvon Martin, in which George Zimmerman shot and killed the 17-year-old black teenager, and more broadly about information on crime statistics.

“I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up it was obvious Zimmerman was in the right,” Roofwrote on his site.”But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.”

His search led him first to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a right-wing group documenting black on white crime and publishing gruesome content online. Roof says the information he absorbed online led him to believe there was a much deeper issue of violence targeting whites than the widely-reported Martin case, even though all of the data across the country supports the opposite notion: the United States is dealing with a racially-based crime issue of whites attacking blacks and other minorities.

To this day, fake news sites like Daily Wire appear on a Google search of “black on white crime”before the FBIs fact-based statistics.

A Google search for “black on white crime” shows misleading sites like Daily Wire ahead of fact-based data published by the FBI on June 16, 2017. Chris Riotta, Newsweek

“Theres been a general loss of civility in online discussions on race, gender and religion,”Beirich said. “Maybe if Google displayed factual results for Dylann Roof instead of misinformation at the top of their news pages, we wouldnt be here, facing the anniversary of his massacre.”

Though there arent statistics to indicate broad trends in hate crimes throughout 2017 yet, violence against marginalized communities is seemingly continuingto soar, specifically against trans women of color, the LGBTI community and Muslims. The SPLC reported 1,372 reported bias incidents between the November election and early February, just after Trump was sworn in.

“We have to as a society understand the urgent crisis and epidemic of violence that we find ourselves facing, and we must not tolerate the kind of hate, discrimination and violence that is all too common,”McBride says. “Hate breeds discrimination, discrimination often times breeds violence. These are all connected to one another. We cant tolerate hate, we cant allow hate to foster in our laws and in our hearts. Thats why its on all of us to take action to stand up to speak out.”

The 55-year-old suspect was charged in two recent incidents in Bellevue one at a gas station involving three men of Syrian descent, and another at a thrift shop involving a man of Ethiopian descent.

A 55-year-old man was charged Friday with hate crimes in two separate incidents in Bellevue.

Kenneth Dean Sjarpe, whose last known address was in Snoqualmie, is in King County Jail on two counts of malicious harassment, with bail set at $225,000.

If convicted as charged, the King County Prosecutors Office said, sentencing guidelines call for about 12 months imprisonment.

In an altercation at a gas station in the early evening of May 23, Sjarpe allegedly yelled at three men of Syrian descent, Go back to your country you , ending with a racial slur.

The encounter at the Arco AM/PM on Northup Way continued with an exchange of the f-word and with one of the reporting victims stating, Come over here and say that to my face.

Sjarpe allegedly said at one point, Ill kill you, Ill shoot you, go back home you Muslim , ending that tirade with another insult.

The alleged victims said that Sjarpe got into his Ford Bronco and drove toward the men, swerving away at the last second and driving off.

Video surveillance cameras caught the incident.

A report by Bellevue police Detective Steven Hooper said the video shows one of the alleged victims pumping gas, reacting to something, and then is seen waving his arms and yelling at something off camera.

The report said that another of the alleged victims is seen getting out of the passenger seat of his car, also starts yelling and appears to raise his middle finger toward the subject.

The report said the video then shows the Bronco moving toward the subjects car, with one person jumping back, and then the Bronco is seen leaving the scene.

Hooper said the next day he happened to see Sjarpe walking along Northup Way toward a travel trailer. He interviewed Sjarpe about the incident and wrote in his report that Sjarpe became animated and his voice got louder as he started talking about how he hated those people.

When the detective asked whom he was referring to, Hooper wrote, He said the Iranians, Indians, Middle Easterners. He said they shouldnt be in our country. How theyre taking our jobs. He said he supports Trump in keeping them out.

In the second incident, in the early afternoon of June 1 at the Jubilee REACH Thrift Store, Sjarpe allegedly approached an Ethiopian immigrant who told police he came here 37 years ago and yelled, I hate , ending that sentence with a racial slur, court documents say.

The alleged victim says he ignored Sjarpe, but Sjarpe followed him upstairs in the thrift shop, where there was no exit. Sjarpe then allegedly said, I want you guys out of my country, you [N-word]. If you dont leave, Ill make you disappear.

Court papers say that Sjarpe had his hands up, and that the victim was fearful, as there were knives in the vicinity and no escape.

The report said the alleged victim cried out for help, that others intervened and Sjarpe was forced out.

Sjarpe then allegedly returned to the thrift store on June 6 and 7, again using racial slurs, and again screaming about people from India taking our jobs.

Charging papers say Sjarpe has an extensive criminal history, ranging from harassment to distributing marijuana in a large-scale operation.

Hate is hate is hate. Thats the bottom line. And it is rotting our country, no matter what flavor or shape it comes in. The killing of 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen, whose body was found in a pond near her mosque in Northern Virginia after some sort of encounter with a motorist, is not being investigated as a hate crime, officials said Monday. Officials are saying its being investigated as a road rage incident. A hate crime, as we understand it, fits into a tight, legal narrative. Its a crime motivated by prejudice whether its based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. And so far, investigators do not believe Nabra was picked out, targeted and killed specifically because she was a Muslim wearing an abaya, walking to her mosque. And it seems that she was not killed simply because she was a young woman walking outside in the darkness. [Killing of Muslim teenager is being investigated as road-rage incident] Officials say the suspect in her killing, Darwin Martinez Torres, was driving as a group that included Nabra was walking and riding bikes in and along the road. And then something, like road rage, happened. But her mother said detectives have told her that Nabra was struck with a metal bat. There is no doubt that hitting a 17-year-old girl with a bat and dumping her body in a pond would be an act born of hate, which is rages twin brother. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, has never been more true. This is what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R) said after a gunman opened fire on a GOP baseball practice last week in Alexandria. Tragedy after tragedy, we puzzle through the labels and follow the common narratives to try to find the logic: Liberals hating Republicans? Muslims hating Christians? White hating black? Cats hating dogs? But that doesnt seem to always work. The nation is more than the Hatfields and McCoys. Even if this was not a hate crime targeting Muslims, it has the effect of one. The Muslim community in Virginia is nervous. This happened on the same weekend that an attacker crashed a car into a crowd outside a mosque in London. That appeared to be a very deliberate attack on Muslims. Folks at the Virginia mosque, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling, are left to wonder whether they should provide deeper security and patrols during these last 10 days of Ramadan, because they may be targets of hate. And all women wondered whether this means that this bedroom community is now a place that isnt safe for them to walk around in. And all parents of teens wondered if this is about teens no longer being safe in the suburban haven they moved their kids to. And because Nabra is also African American, born in America to Egyptian immigrants, African Americans wondered whether this is another instance of them being targeted because of their race. It really is an attack on all of us. Loudoun County, in all its diversity, is seeing that. Torres, the 22-year-old charged with Nabras killing, is Latino and doesnt appear to have connected with any hate groups on his Facebook page. He doesnt fit into the narrative we come to expect when faced with alleged hate crimes. That may be why so many in Loudoun seem to have a heighten sense of fear. No one is looking at this as only a Muslim thing, said Abdul Rashid Abdullah, a member of ADAMS whose son was at the mosque the night of the incident. This is not just an attack on Muslims, its an attack on the entire community. In Britain, the van driver who plowed into a crowd was heard yelling that he wanted to kill Muslims. [Van strikes crowd near London mosques in terrorist attack] In Loudoun County, the man accused of killing Nabra was not reported to have said anything about her religion. But a Muslim teenage girl is dead. And were being told that some sort of road rage led to her death. And what about the death of a patriotic and accomplished young man named Richard Collins III, who was standing on a curb at a Maryland college campus when he was fatally stabbed in May? Was that hate? Or the deaths of two men who were fatally stabbed on a train in Portland, Ore., after trying to defend two women from a man making anti-Muslim statements? Was that hate? Or what about the shootings on a baseball field in Alexandria, where a gunman asked whether the politicians practicing were Republicans or Democrats before he opened fire? Was that hate? Hatred of all stripes is growing. We watched it, stoked it with every debate that turned into an argument, fanned it with every Facebook meme that went just a bit too far, fueled it with every zero-sum approach to discourse and action. Courtesy is no longer the norm. Thats whats wrong with America right now, Abdullah said. Not respecting your neighbor. Nabra was killed by some kind of toxic mix of hate and rage, theres no doubt about that even if it doesnt meet the legal definition of a hate crime. Twitter: @petulad

Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is trying again on a bill to keep anyone who has committed a hate crime from buying guns. Casey, a Democrat, first introduced the legislation one year ago, just days after the shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The measure would expand the categories of those banned from purchasing firearms to include anyone convicted of misdemeanor-level hate crimes such asusing a gun to threaten others based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability. Federal law currently bans those convicted of felonies and domestic violence misdemeanors from buying guns. Casey reintroduced the bill, known as the Disarm Hate Act, earlier this month as the country remembers the 49 victims of last year’s Orlando shooting, as well as the nine people fatally shot during a prayer meeting at Mother Bethel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. “Hate unchecked usually grows in almost every instance,” Casey said at a press conference Monday at Mother Bethel AME Church in Ardmore, Montgomery County.”And hate unchecked with the use of a firearm can have a destructive impact.” However, it is unclear how the legislation might have prevented the Orlando or Charleston shootings; neither of perpetrator had been convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes before, according to news reports. And, with a Republican-dominated Congress averse to tightening gun laws, this bill is unlikely to go further than its predecessor, which never left the Senate Judiciary Committee. But anti-gun violence advocates say it’s part of a common-sense approach to limit sales of firearms only to law-abiding citizens and to keep them out of the hands of those with a record of harming others. “We know people intent on harm will find ways to do harm. We make it too easy, though,” said Shira Goodman, executive director of Ceasefire PA. “We don’t have enough prohibited categories and, in some places, you can buy guns in private sales without any background check, regardless of whether you have a felony conviction.” While the future of this bill is uncertain, Tiara Parker wants lawmakers to go further in their attempts to curb gun violence.The 21-year-old Philadelphia resident survived the Pulse shooting with a gunshot wound to her left side. Her cousin Akyra Murray did not. Speaking from the pulpit of the church, Parker urged Casey “to dig a little deeper… to stop guns from being purchased so easily, starting from the sources, from where they come from. “I will do what it takes to make sure that we start getting rid of them because I lost way too many people that are way too close to me because of a gun.”

An Illinois bill that awaits Republican Gov. Bruce Rauners signaturewould require convicted hate crime offenders to take diversity training courses pertaining to the specific group that they victimized. The bills main author, Sadia Covert, is a member of the Islamic Center of Naperville and began her crusade for hate crime reform in 2014, the Illinois Daily Herald reported Monday. In addition to diversity courses, the law would remove the states $1,000 cap on restitution payments and allow victims to pursue other monetary damages in civil court. Rauner is expected to approve the bill this week. We cannot stay silent on hate, Rauner said in a March statement. We cannot stay silent when families in our community are in danger. The bill is the first in a three-step plan that Covert hopes, if implemented fully, will curb hate crime in Illinois, the Herald reported. Covert decried the absence of diversity training and education in Illinois current hate crime penalties, arguing that prison time alone is unhelpful. When people have more understanding, theyre less likely to hate or commit a crime, Covert said. Democratic State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, who sponsored the bill, told reporters that the educational component is very needed. Sometimes people engage in hateful outbreaks against other minorities just because they might not understand or have a working knowledge of individuals different genders, different religions, different mannerisms just the differences between us, Kifowit said. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called a summit in February to address the states apparent spike in hate crimes, citing the numerous bomb threats against Jewish centers across the country. Many of these threats were later debunked, however, as one former leftist reporter for The Intercept pled guilty to making eight such bomb threats in an attempt to get back at his Jewish ex-girlfriend. Follow Anders on Twitter Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected].

Islamophobia, or hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims, is still not taken seriously enough in Britain, according to campaigners and academics. Following the terrorist attack in north Londons Seven Sisters, which left one dead and 10 in hospital, celebrities and the public alike have criticized outlets of Islamophobic rhetoric. Among the culprits are tabloid newspapers like the Sun, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum, and the leader of far-right group Britain First, Paul Golding. Islamophobia is not taken seriously enough in this country, Tom Mills, co-editor of the book What is Islamophobia, told RT. You can say things about Muslims and Islam in British public life that you would never get away with saying about other minority groups. I dont think theres any doubt about that. But theres also the fact that if you look at the data, Islamophobic terrorist attacks in the UK are roughly as prevalent as attacks by those identifying with Islam, yet they are not treated as such by the media or the authorities. When the story was originally reported by the Daily Mail as white van driver injures at least 10 people, Harry Potter author JK Rowling launched a series of tweets asking how the perpetrator had been radicalized the sort of questions asked following attacks by Islamist extremists. The Mail has misspelled terrorist as white van driver. Now lets discuss how he was radicalized, she tweeted. She followed it up with the caption of a tweet by UKIPs former leader Nigel Farage and his unveiling of a Leave campaign poster showing a long line of presumed migrants with the words Breaking Point superimposed. Lets talk about how the #FinsburyPark terrorist was radicalized, she added. Her messages triggered a series of angry replies from Farage and rightwing pundit Katie Hopkins, who Rowling also accused of provoking Islamophobia. Academics like Mills believe the problem lies within British society and its failure to understand how the vilification of Muslims works. Its not just that Islamophobia isnt taken seriously enough, though. Its also that it is not properly understood,”Mills said. LATEST: Follow RTs LIVE UPDATES Hate crimes against Muslims are recorded by the police, which is a good thing, and there are a number of initiatives seeking to combat bigoted views about against Muslims, as well as the far right groups and movements associated with them. But what tends to always get overlooked is that the far right are just part of a broader continuum of actors that produce Islamophobia. At the heart of Islamophobia in this country is the state, and in particular the state counter-terrorism apparatus, and then there are much more mainstream conservative, as well as liberal, groupings, that have actively contributed towards an Islamophobic culture and policy agenda. A report by anti-Islamophobia group Tell MAMA reported at the end of last year that British mosques had been attacked no less than 100 times since 2013.

Micaela Parker @OD_Parker Local jail and state prison union officials hope that a proposed bill that seeks to punish attacks on law enforcement as hate crimes will reduce the number of inmate-on-staff assaults at correctional facilities. On June 1, an Oneida County Correctional Facility inmate reportedly stabbed a correction officer in the shoulder and chest with an unknown weapon, said Luis Roman, president of the Oneida County Deputy Sheriffs Benevolent Association. He believes the proposed bill could go a long way toward preventing assaults on correction officers. I think that if the inmates understood that they could be charged with a hate crime, it would dissuade them from those activities that go on at the jail almost every night, Roman said. The Community Heroes Protection Act classifies certain crimes against first responders such as law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency personnel, including correction officers as hate crimes only if they are intentionally aimed at first responders based on actual or perceived employment in that field. Police officers and first responders are not currently included as victims in the current definition of a hate crime. The Community Heroes Protection Act passed the state Senate in May and was delivered to the Assembly. It currently is in committee. Local supporters of the proposed bill include Sen. Joseph Griffo, R-Rome, and Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, D-Utica. I do think that if this was to go into effect and we got the support from the Assembly that we did from the Senate that it would almost force justice to be served, Roman said. Because it doesnt seem like anything goes anywhere. I know (getting assaulted) is part of my day. If that should happen to me there should be consequences. Assault incidents reported to Roman at the Oneida County jail in 2017 to date were not immediately available. In 2016, Roman recorded more than 16 incidents detailing conduct ranging from menacing to harassment to assault. In a fact sheet dated June 1, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision reported 318 assaults on staff by prison inmates statewide. There were 760 reported assaults last year and 895 in 2015. The data does not break down the assaults in individual facilities, such as Mohawk, Marcy or Mid-State correctional facilities. In a statement, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association said the proposed bill if passed would hopefully serve as a deterrent for those who would specifically target anyone in law enforcement because of their profession. Correction officers have one of the most difficult jobs in the country and face constant dangers and attacks at the hands of some of the most violent criminals in the state, the statement read. Certainly, we fully support this legislation and commend the legislators who introduced this bill and support it and our members. Follow @OD_Parker on Twitter or call her at 315-792-5063.

When the bag of feces arrived at the LGBT Center Orange County, Laura Kanter knew immediately what to do. She picked up the phone and called the Orange County Human Relations Council to talk with Don Han, who deals with hate crimes. Kanter, as director of policy advocacy and youth services for the LGBT Center in Santa Ana, recently recalled the disturbing incident that occurred in May. She said that the council provides an important service in the community. We can call the police and I did, and they’ll just take a report, she said. But I knew we had someone to turn to and that’s what these folks do best. They look at the bigger picture to create understanding between communities.” Hans non-profit organization was founded in 1991 in part to raise money and develop programs overseen by the Orange County Human Relations Commission. The council works with law enforcement agencies, compiles an annual hate crime report and provides mediation and violence prevention programs in partnerships with schools, corporations, cities, foundations and individuals. We try to be a voice of reason and listen, Han said, and were committed to getting people from all sides to come together. The council has raised about $30 million in the last 25 years to support the county commissions work, according to its website. But until recently the council was in danger of losing the funding that pays for its three-member staff, including Han. For months, county supervisors debated back and forth, threatening to cut the $252,000 needed to pay for the councils personnel, while the group received an eviction notice to vacate the county building where it has operated, rent-free, by July 1. Meanwhile, the number of reported hate crimes increased 50 in 2016, compared with 44 the year before with African Americans and the LGBT population as the two most frequently targeted communities across the county, according to the councils newest report. This trend, coupled with the fear that Orange County could lose its human relations advocates, prompted more than 300 supporters to swarm supervisors meetings this month, pushing to allow the two groups to continue their partnership. Among the proponents praising the groups anti-bullying, interfaith and mediation campaigns was Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, who said there is a lot of fear in our immigrant and LGBTQ communities. This is an important public safety and quality of life issue for us. The board voted 4 to 1 this week, with Supervisor Michelle Steel as the lone dissenter, to continue funding the council for at least another year. But the panel also urged the council and commission to stop co-mingling, with one supervisor noting that some commission staff members report to the councils director. Supervisor Andrew Do, the most vocal opponent before the vote, criticized the confusion between the operations of the council and commission, saying it raises questions about accountability and leaves the board vulnerable to violations of state public meeting laws. The public has to be clear on the two entities, he said. Right now, theyre so intertwined, people dont know whos responsible for what and as supervisors, we dont know whats going on at the council while were the ones overseeing the commission that works with them. On June 6, supervisors deadlocked 2 to 2, with one member absent, on the personnel funding for the council. Supervisor Todd Spitzer proposed another vote a week later with the full board present. Do ended up voting to allocate the money because the work is still viable, he said. People around the county still need a voice. Spitzer blamed the county for initially pressuring the non-profit to raise funds for commission programs during a time when Orange County faced a bankruptcy scandal. He said the board must choose if it wants to give money to programs and control its delivery or allow the non-profit to continue finding revenue. Commission and council members promised to meet with county officials to find a way to separate our administration and still be effective, said Rusty Kennedy, the councils chief executive. Were ecstatic to be able to continue. anh.do@latimes.com Twitter: @newsterrier

President Donald Trump announced he was running for office on June 16, 2015. The following day, white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire in a historically black church located in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people in the hopes of launching an all-out race war. Of course, those two events aren’t directly linked. “But its certainly symbolic,”Heidi Beirich, director of Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project, tells Newsweek. “There doesnt seem to be a single marginalized population that was left out of the emboldened reaction to this election,”she said. “There has been a massive explosion of violence across the country, and an increase in the number of hate crimes against virtually all minority groups. The numbers are definitely going up in 2017.” Daily Emails and Alerts- Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox Two years after Roof sat in on a bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, before taking out his gun and shooting the local parishioners, reports of hate crimes against black, Muslim, LGBTI, Sikh, Jewish and Hispanic communities have only continued to surge. Meanwhile, groups like SPLC and the Human Rights Campaign say battling the rise in hate-based violence will largely take place online in the coming years, where racists and those prone to committing attacks against minorities feed off of radicalized content and fake news. A church youth group from Dothan, Alabama praying in front of the Emanuel AME Church on the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting on July 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. John Moore, Getty When looking at the data, it becomes immediately clear that spikes in hate crimes and racial tension havent only impacted black communities, like the Episcopal Church. There were at least 1,314 reported cases of anti-Muslim bias in 2014, according to the FBIs annual Uniform Crime Report. By 2016, that annual figure soared to 2,213. Anti-Semitic incidents also rose in 2015, the latest year the Anti-Defamation League has data on, rising three percent to 941 total incidents nationwide. Of all the hate crimes carried out that year, over 48 percent were committed by whites. “We know that the normalization of violence, particularly against marginalized people, creates a culture of complicity and acceptance of hate based violence,”Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, tells Newsweek. “We also see that the political climate fosters violence. As anti-transgender measures are introduced across the country and the rhetoric is turned up, we are hearing from the community an increased vulnerability of harassment in their daily lives.” In total, hate crimes rose from 5,479 reported incidents in 2014 to 5,800 the next year, when Roof made his decision to act on a months-long quest he had documented at length across the web and on his racist website, TheLastRhodesian.com. Roof, who wassentencedto death on Jan. 10, 2017,was reportedly an avid reader of Daily Stormer, a hate-mongering website loaded with racial conspiracy theories, fake news and anti-Semitism. The sites readership also included James Jackson, who penned a suicide manifesto before driving from Baltimore to New York to kill a random black man with a sword, as well as Thomas Mair, an extremist loner who murdered BritishParliament member Jo Cox. The 23-year-old also searched on Google for information about the case of Trayvon Martin, in which George Zimmerman shot and killed the 17-year-old black teenager, and more broadly about information on crime statistics. “I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up it was obvious Zimmerman was in the right,” Roofwrote on his site.”But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.” His search led him first to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a right-wing group documenting black on white crime and publishing gruesome content online. Roof says the information he absorbed online led him to believe there was a much deeper issue of violence targeting whites than the widely-reported Martin case, even though all of the data across the country supports the opposite notion: the United States is dealing with a racially-based crime issue of whites attacking blacks and other minorities. To this day, fake news sites like Daily Wire appear on a Google search of “black on white crime”before the FBIs fact-based statistics. A Google search for “black on white crime” shows misleading sites like Daily Wire ahead of fact-based data published by the FBI on June 16, 2017. Chris Riotta, Newsweek “Theres been a general loss of civility in online discussions on race, gender and religion,”Beirich said. “Maybe if Google displayed factual results for Dylann Roof instead of misinformation at the top of their news pages, we wouldnt be here, facing the anniversary of his massacre.” Though there arent statistics to indicate broad trends in hate crimes throughout 2017 yet, violence against marginalized communities is seemingly continuingto soar, specifically against trans women of color, the LGBTI community and Muslims. The SPLC reported 1,372 reported bias incidents between the November election and early February, just after Trump was sworn in. “We have to as a society understand the urgent crisis and epidemic of violence that we find ourselves facing, and we must not tolerate the kind of hate, discrimination and violence that is all too common,”McBride says. “Hate breeds discrimination, discrimination often times breeds violence. These are all connected to one another. We cant tolerate hate, we cant allow hate to foster in our laws and in our hearts. Thats why its on all of us to take action to stand up to speak out.”

The 55-year-old suspect was charged in two recent incidents in Bellevue one at a gas station involving three men of Syrian descent, and another at a thrift shop involving a man of Ethiopian descent. A 55-year-old man was charged Friday with hate crimes in two separate incidents in Bellevue. Kenneth Dean Sjarpe, whose last known address was in Snoqualmie, is in King County Jail on two counts of malicious harassment, with bail set at $225,000. If convicted as charged, the King County Prosecutors Office said, sentencing guidelines call for about 12 months imprisonment. In an altercation at a gas station in the early evening of May 23, Sjarpe allegedly yelled at three men of Syrian descent, Go back to your country you , ending with a racial slur. The encounter at the Arco AM/PM on Northup Way continued with an exchange of the f-word and with one of the reporting victims stating, Come over here and say that to my face. Sjarpe allegedly said at one point, Ill kill you, Ill shoot you, go back home you Muslim , ending that tirade with another insult. The alleged victims said that Sjarpe got into his Ford Bronco and drove toward the men, swerving away at the last second and driving off. Video surveillance cameras caught the incident. A report by Bellevue police Detective Steven Hooper said the video shows one of the alleged victims pumping gas, reacting to something, and then is seen waving his arms and yelling at something off camera. The report said that another of the alleged victims is seen getting out of the passenger seat of his car, also starts yelling and appears to raise his middle finger toward the subject. The report said the video then shows the Bronco moving toward the subjects car, with one person jumping back, and then the Bronco is seen leaving the scene. Hooper said the next day he happened to see Sjarpe walking along Northup Way toward a travel trailer. He interviewed Sjarpe about the incident and wrote in his report that Sjarpe became animated and his voice got louder as he started talking about how he hated those people. When the detective asked whom he was referring to, Hooper wrote, He said the Iranians, Indians, Middle Easterners. He said they shouldnt be in our country. How theyre taking our jobs. He said he supports Trump in keeping them out. In the second incident, in the early afternoon of June 1 at the Jubilee REACH Thrift Store, Sjarpe allegedly approached an Ethiopian immigrant who told police he came here 37 years ago and yelled, I hate , ending that sentence with a racial slur, court documents say. The alleged victim says he ignored Sjarpe, but Sjarpe followed him upstairs in the thrift shop, where there was no exit. Sjarpe then allegedly said, I want you guys out of my country, you [N-word]. If you dont leave, Ill make you disappear. Court papers say that Sjarpe had his hands up, and that the victim was fearful, as there were knives in the vicinity and no escape. The report said the alleged victim cried out for help, that others intervened and Sjarpe was forced out. Sjarpe then allegedly returned to the thrift store on June 6 and 7, again using racial slurs, and again screaming about people from India taking our jobs. Charging papers say Sjarpe has an extensive criminal history, ranging from harassment to distributing marijuana in a large-scale operation.

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